Reduce, Re-use and Recycle was the wedding mantra since the Bride is a 3R Devotee…and the Bride’s Mother has a stash of vintage textiles and findings to make creative use of…

So the next RRR project after the chuppah was the headgear created for the wedding party of four ladies by Madeleine France Cormier, modiste and milliner of Chapeaux de Madeleine in Ottawa using her own millinery supplies in tandem with vintage textiles from my stash.

For the Bride, a fascinator was created from a silk cocktail hat inherited from her grandmother, and trimmed with silk veiling, feathers, antique square pearl buttons and handmade antique lace Passion Flower motifs:

A detail of the lace motif:

Another detail, showing how the veil is attached to a headband by a small lace motif and pearl button:

Sister in Law, also into RRR, wore magenta purple suede shoes obtained from a consignment store (purple fascinator pic in next post…)

Friend of the Bride, Linsday Macdonald, made flowers for the dinner table out of old newspaper and buttons, displaying them in recycled blue Bristol glass sherry bottles along with fresh flowers in blue – hydrangeas and hyacinths (FYI: Harvey’s Bristol Cream is my most used condiment…It goes into everything from stews to soups to gravy to blueberry sauce to French toast …and naturally, the cook’s glass…it sits permanently on my kitchen counter along with a companion bottle of Marsala – same uses, less sweet)

And just a few more pics of the chuppah, culled from here and there (I have to admit I got too excited and forgot to give instructions re pics of the chuppah for my blog…)

Last entry in this post is about the Wedding Cloth made from the linen tablecloth (seen above) that covers the small table under the chuppah and holds the candles, wine and wine glasses required for the wedding ceremony. When I returned from the wedding, I eco printed the linen cloth (stained with red wine) with dried leaves left over from the chuppa eco prints, adding in some yellow wedding roses that the children had strewn beneath the canopy for the Bride and Groom. I bundled it with iron chunks, soaked it in white vinegar and steamed it for two hours. This is the first of the Wedding Art Textiles following the creation of the chuppah.

The Chuppah Tablecloth

For the colours, I used dried coreopsis, Japanese maple and cotinus from last summer, along with yellow roses from the chuppah, some old flat irons to give rusts, blacks and greys and a nice big red wine stain. The linen is damask with an ivy motif.

And a last pic of the Bride and Groom standing under the willows:

Next post: More fascinators, possibly more table decs and maybe more chuppah pics. And likely the start of a new series of eco prints.

Heads Up for my faithful readers: We are selling our house and therefore house hunting this summer plus I have a show in July. Blog posts will likely be not more than twice a month starting June 2012…Thank you for your interest! I am hoping to do a major update on my dye plant page, once I get my notes sorted.

5 Responses to Art Textiles for a Wedding

What a lovely wedding!
Your eco prints on the wedding cloth are inspirational!
The chuppah is the most perfect canopy I have ever seen.
,,,,,,,,I will carry this blog in my mind as I prepare for my daughter’s wedding!!